This invention relates to the production of fatty particulates, and more particularly to a process for quickly tempering said particulates to increase their storage stability, suppressing their likelihood of agglomerating, blooming or the like.
Crystallizable fatty materials exhibit polymorphic crystal behavior, that is, they can exist in different, predominantly distinct, crystalline modifications known as .alpha., .alpha.', .beta.', and .beta.. Certain ones such as lard or hydrogenated cottonseed oil tend to form .beta.' crystals readily; others such as hydrogenated soybean oil tend to form beta crystals. Alpha form fatty crystals are the least stable and tend to form upon rapid or sudden cooling of molten fat in massive or particulate form.
For example, molten fat can be sprayed and chilled as fine droplets, or fed to a conventially refrigerated chilling roll and removed as flakes or as a sheet of crystallized fat. Such sheet of crystallized fat then can be comminuted, e.g. by cutters, to yield particulates of the fat of desired size.
The rapidly chilled fat particulates will evolve heat due to crystal transformation thereof to a more stable crystal form. Such heat evolvement can occur within minutes after the rapid chilling operation and/or continue over extended periods of time of, for example, up to several weeks.
Hence, particulates of the rapidly chilled fat, when packaged, will tend to agglomerate appreciably under conditions of storage due to the heat evolved during such crystal transformation.
It is an object of this invention to produce fatty particulates which resist appreciable agglomeration under conditions of storage. It is another object to remove the heat of crystal transformation and latent heat of crystallization from fatty particulates before such particulates can cake, block, or agglomerate due to such heat evolvement. These and other objects, which will become readily apparent to those skilled in the art, are accomplished by the invention disclosed herein.